The Vancouver Canucks suffered a disappointing loss Thursday night, but in the Gary Bettman world of closely packed standings, it wasn’t what you’d call a bad loss. A point got away, that’s certainly true, but as we begin this Friday morning hat-trick of issues surrounding this team the community follows so closely, there is the realization that they could lose every game the same way and still finish with 82 points. Not good enough for the playoffs, but not far off.

1. It’s pretty easy to see the Canucks can’t score goals and easy to see one of the main reasons is their power play, which is sitting 27th in the league standings. That’s far from where most fans feel it should be, given where it was just a couple of seasons ago. But there are other obvious reasons as well. They have no goal scorers. Look at Alex Burrows, for instance. You had to expect his production would diminish if he wasn’t playing with the Sedins and everyone can accept that. But fade to zero is a little hard to accept. Funny how it works. When he was making $2 million a year, he was filling the net with the twins and was grossly underpaid. Now he’s been bumped up to $4.5 schmil per, he should be wearing a mask. Guess it evens out. Daniel Sedin is still a good player, but not the guy who had the puck in the top corner a nanosecond after it hit his stick like he was in the past. They had hoped David Booth would score, and he certainly moved a lot better Thursday night. But that 31-goal season is so long ago nobody remembers it and come to think of it, perhaps someone hacked into the NHL database and changed his numbers. Alex Edler’s production has slowed, given he’s not on the first unit of the power play. Henrik’s never been a scorer, and like Burrows, Jannik Hansen has missed some games. That’s why getting a decent forward has to be foremost on Mike Gillis’s shopping list at the moment, although he’s not over-burdened with cap space

2. Everyone in the NHL probably complains about the officiating at some point, and on Thursday night John Tortorella refused to discuss the way his team was treated in the San Jose game. But he was tempted, because you really have to scratch your head a lot of nights if you are a Canuck observer. You don’t even have to be a fan to wonder what gives. The Canucks had all the legs last night, they had the puck all night, the Sharks have been playing a lot lately and had nothing. Yet they end up with more power-play opportunities, the officials making calls from so far out of position you had to wonder whether they even saw what they think they saw. Even though Vancouver has an aggressive, five-guys-on-or-supporting-the-puck approach and thus have it a great deal, they have had 21 games to date and in only five have they had more power-play opportunities than the opposition. In six more it’s been even. In the other 10 it’s been Vancouver with fewer power-play opportunities. If the Canucks’ penalty kill wasn’t the second best in the game, this would really be an ongoing sore point. As it is, it’s just business as usual for a Canadian team, the Cup not traveling north since 1993 or about the same time the commissioner became the commissioner.

3. It can be terrifying to look at the standings in the competitive Western Conference, given the way teams out here are hammering those in the east, and conclude the Canucks are solid bets to miss the playoffs. And maybe they will. But don’t forget they’ve played 13 games on the road and just eight at home so far, so if they get can get on something of a roll in these next five games and take care of business at Rogers Arena, the standings are apt to look a whole lot better when the schedule reaches 13 home and 13 away. The Canucks play Dallas on Sunday after the Stars have been in town for two days (the Roxy Effect) and after that it’s Florida and Columbus, all must-win games. Lose any one of those three at home and you start to write your own obit. But win all three and a little over a week from now, the standings might be good enough for the players to glance at without recoiling in horror.

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